A black conservative's place for independent thinking and common sense -- A little oasis for those who got caught up in the momentum of the civil rights movement, but failed to discern the false from the true

Tuesday, August 12, 2008

As a liberal for many years, Time magazine columnist Joe Klein has grown used to getting into hot water. Back in the 1980s, he bucked the trend of his compatriots, when he challenged the worth of Affirmative Action policies and other social programs. His dissident views created a little firestorm of criticism among the liberal media and other intelligentsia.

It was at this time that I met Joe, outside some political event, whose title and focus are long forgotten. I was distributing the hard copy version of my Issues & Views newsletter, and he was there to cover the event. I think he was then employed by Newsweek magazine. We struck up a conversation, with me pre-judging him as just another liberal media type, until he informed me of the flak he was then undergoing, due to what was deemed his "conservative" stances on the above-mentioned issues. This was not a knee-jerk liberal.In 2006, I did a brief piece on Klein's book for the I&V website. In Politics Lost: How American democracy was trivialized by people who think you're stupid, Klein described, through his first-hand observations of several presidential campaigns, how diverse "consultants," public relations specialists, pollsters, and various kinds of "handlers," have overtaken the political process and the people who run for public office. In the book, he observed that "to be moderate is to be homeless in 21st century American politics," and that "it isn't easy to be a classic liberal or conservative these days, either."

Today, Klein again finds himself in hot water. This time, it is his views on the foreign front, rather than the domestic one, that has ruffled the feathers of his adversaries. Last month, on his Time blog, Swampland, Klein took exception to the role played, during the past several years, by Washington DC's powerful neoconservatives. He wrote about "a great many Jewish neoconservatives – people like Joe Lieberman and the crowd over at Commentary," who, "plumped for war, and now for an even more foolish assault on Iran . . ." He denounced those who are successfully "using U.S. military power, U.S. lives and money, to make the world safe for Israel," along with "the two oil executives, Bush and Cheney," who are "securing a new source of business for their Texas buddies." Klein chided those who make a fuss over the so-called surge in Iraq, which he referred to as "whipped cream on a pile of fertilizer – a regional policy unprecedented in its stupidity and squalor."

In a follow-up interview with The Atlantic magazine's Jeffrey Goldberg, Klein elaborated further on his convictions, explaining that he is not "anti-Semitic" (as you knew Abe Foxman and the horde of squealing hawks would charge), but is "anti-neoconservative." He continued, "I think these people are following very perversely extremist policies." Klein implied that the threat of Iran is hyped for cynical reasons, referring to the elderly Jews who retire to Florida, including his own parents. Picking a fight with Iran is strictly for political purposes, Klein declared, "to scare the shit out of my parents. It's a Broward County strategy, it's a Florida strategy."

When Goldberg observed that Klein was "using the word 'Jewish' in ways that we haven't seen Jewish reporters and Jewish columnists use," Klein replied, "It's about time. I think everyone else is too afraid to do it." Claiming to be a "strong supporter" of Israel, Klein insists, nevertheless, "There were people out there in the Jewish community who saw this as a way to create a benign domino theory and eliminate all Israel's enemies." This is a "dangerous anachronistic neocolonial" notion, he contends.

Klein revealed some of the vituperative responses emanating from his angry opponents. One columnist wrote on her National Review blog, "I can't imagine why Time hasn't shut this guy down and fired him." Klein says, "That's what they want. They want to stifle opinions that are different than theirs."

That might not be so easy any longer. Once unspeakable thoughts can now be spoken. Some believe this is essentially due to the bravery of scholars Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer who, in 2006, published their groundbreaking essay, "The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy" and, in 2007, published the expanded version as a book. Many others risked their livelihoods and reputations when attempting to speak out on this subject.

As Daniel Luban writes, Walt and Mearsheimer helped to create the "political space" in which the once taboo subject of the United States' involvement with Israel can be openly discussed and debated. It's in the closet no more.

We know that it is not only Jewish neocons who are responsible for the current Middle East debacle, but, as writer Daniel Levy puts it, "Too many Jewish communal leaders and institutions made the mistake of not standing up and speaking out more against the right-wing excesses of a small minority of their co-religionists." They cheapened the term "anti-Semitism," he says, as they built a "wall of untouchability" around them.

M.J. Rosenberg, a former member of the AIPAC staff, now with the Israel Policy Forum, congratulates Joe Klein on the firmness with which he has expressed himself, and is pleased that Klein has not issued the expected mea culpa, so familiar, whenever a public figure dares to wade in such politically incorrect waters. As for all who helped to bring on the Iraq invasion, Rosenberg writes, "They should shut up and volunteer at Walter Reed. For the rest of their lives."

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Loss of the Issues & Views website

Due to the fact that the owners of the company that has hosted Issues & Views - The Website, since its creation in 1997, have decided to host only sites in Alaska, the website linked to this blog is probably lost.

Issues & Views - The Website (www.issues-views.com) contained hundreds of articles first printed in the hard copy Issues & Views newsletter (1983 through 2002), along with newer articles composed in the 1990s.

Although the former host has re-directed clicks to the website to this blog, it does not appear that there will be any rescue of the website's files or database. For this reason, surfers looking for issues-views.com are landing on this blog. (The website is currently being cached by Google.)

I have learned that an archived version of the website is available on Wayback Machine. Unfortunately, this last capture was performed in 2008, so it lacks certain minor deletions and editing done in 2009 and 2010. However, anyone searching for a particular article should be able to find it there.

- Elizabeth (issues@issues.cnc.net)

Racism is not "sin"

Over the years, as whites have worked to defend themselves against the charge of "racism," they have validated this slur by giving it greater importance than it deserves, and thereby helped to institutionalize it as the world's greatest "sin." As to genuine sin, harboring negative thoughts concerning some group is much further down the list of human deficiencies than bombing Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Dresden and Hamburg, or hacking to death with machetes the men, women and children of an enemy tribe. Now, those are sins! Seeking to force "diversity" down the throats of an unreceptive segment of society is the religious mission of rabid, agenda-driven ideologues. None of this apparent concern for "social justice" has ever been about virtue. It's about power.

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Jacobs and Potter on the un-American nature of "hate crime" legislation.